Tokyo 2020 – Day 14: Laura Kenny makes history, pentathlon gold for Kate French

It was a great day for Team GB’s women as they won seven medals – in the process, Laura Kenny made British history, and Laura Muir ended a near-decade drought for major medals.

Kenny became the first British women to win at three Olympic Games after she and Katie Archibald won the madison event gold. The GB cyclists won with a truly dominant performance, taking gold with 78 points, 33 more than the second-placed Denmark. The madison event is typically unpredictable, but Kenny and Archibald were confident throughout, winning 10 of the 12 sprints on offer. Their lead was such that, among the other teams, it was only ever really a competition for silver. This is Kenny’s fifth gold and sixth Olympic medal overall, making her GB’s most decorated female athlete.

A second gold went to Kate French in the modern pentathlon, who broke away from the field to finish more than 15 second ahead of silver medallist Laura Asadauskaite of Lithuania. She began the laser run, a 3,200-metre run punctuated by four shooting stages, in fifth place. However, she took the lead during the second running section, surging ahead after missing just two of the 22 attempts in the shooting, to consolidate her victory.

Laura Muir smashed her own British record to win silver in the women’s 1500m. She finished the race in a time of 3:54.50, coming behind defending champion Faith Kipyegon of Kenya. World champion Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands took the bronze after a close-fought battle over the final 250m. Further medals came courtesy of GB’s sprint relay teams – the men’s quarter won silver, missing out on the 4x100m title to Italy by just a hundredth of a second, while the women’s team repeated their Rio 2016 bronze. The gold in that event went to Jamaica, whose team featured all three of their 100m individual medallists.

Bronze medals also came in the women’s hockey, where India were beaten 4-3, and in the men’s sprint cycling, after Jack Carlin beat Denis Dmitriev of the ROC in the best-of-three sprint races. A medal will come via Lauren Price, who will fight for a women’s middleweight gold after defeating Dutch opponent Nounchka Fontijn in the semi-final. Price advanced on a split decision to set up a final-round clash with China’s 2018 world champion Li Qian, which will take part on Sunday, and which is guaranteed to provide GB’s sixth boxing medal of Tokyo 2020.

In the women’s football final, Canada beat Sweden in a penalty shootout after the match ended 1-1. Defending champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas won gold in the women’s 400m, while the USA’s Allyson Felix became the most decorated female track and field athlete of all time after winning bronze in the event – it is her tenth Olympic medal, and she has the chance to win an 11th in the 4x400m relay on Saturday.